Alice D. Newcome-BeillBattletech (for PC)Featuring an engaging story, addictive gameplay, and beautiful art design, Battletech is a standout title in the turn-based strategy genre. However, the level of randomness can sometimes feel unfair.

Featuring an engaging story, addictive gameplay, and beautiful art design, Battletech is a standout title in the turn-based strategy genre. However, the level of randomness can sometimes feel unfair.

A hardcore strategy game has ways of making you feel out of your league. It dashes you on the rocks of brutal, but addictive, game design before you wrestle some measure of success. One of the newest games to emulate this harsh, but ultimately rewarding, learning curve is Battletech, a $39.99 turn-based strategy title from Harebrained Schemes and Paradox Interactive. This modern iteration of the storied license isn't without issues, but it kept my attention long after I finished its campaign.

Noble Heart, Mercenary Mind

Battletech, the video game, is a pure adaptation of the Battletech board game that was first published in 1984 by FASA Corporation. Jordan Weisman, one of the board game's creators, played an executive role in this modern take. As a result, the PC game's universe is rich and storied, with the setting echoing a strangely effective combination of giant robots and medieval feudalism. Noble houses project their battlefield influences using Battlemechs, or 'Mechs, piloted by ad-hoc knights or sellswords called Mechwarriors.

You begin the campaign by creating your own Mechwarrior. In addition to a variety of cosmetic options, you also choose your character's backstory, which determines your starting stats and can sometimes lead to unexpected plot threads. The ability to put my own personal stamp on my character's story, all the way down to my character's preferred pronoun, really helps sell the narrative.

Battletech's narrative hosts an impressive level of diversity in terms of character representation. There's a rich and varied cast of characters who, due in part to the terrific writing, never feel like genre stereotypes or window dressing. This remarkably diverse future is a large part of what makes Battletech's narrative element both refreshing and engaging.

Battletech puts you in command of your own mercenary company, taking contracts from whichever side has the fattest wallet. Apart from keeping your company in the black, these contracts provide you with the precious salvage you need to slowly upgrade your band of guns-for-hire into a battalion of stone cold death machines. You can customize each 'Mech with after-market components and outfit them for specific engagements. There is a carefully weighted strategic element to this system, forcing you to consider things like armor placement, ammunition storage, and heat management, as opposed to blindly outfitting each machine with the best tools available.

Just as important as each 'Mech is the pilot inside, whom under the right conditions can tip the battle in your favor. Unlike XCOM's warriors, Battletech's soldiers don't learn many special abilities, so the difference between a rookie and a seasoned veteran is far less pronounced. This means that the outcome of a battle heavily relies on your own strategic cunning, rather than carefully budgeting an arsenal of abilities. Though your squad can simultaneously target multiple enemies or reveal foes outside of your field of vision, the abilities aren't game breaking.

Blood, Sweat, and Luck

Each mission tasks your group of four 'Mechs with completing a variety of objectives, whether that's defending a friendly installation, intercepting an enemy convoy, or simply eliminating a rival group of enemies. While it would be easy to dismiss the missions as being procedurally generated, I was pleased to discover that each map is specifically tailored to each mission that you undertake. While the tilesets for specific biomes do lead to a mild feeling of repetition, I never found myself playing on the same map twice during the course of my 25-plus hour campaign playtime.

Each map is composed of an invisible grid layered on top of the terrain, rather than a series of clearly defined cubes or hexes. Thus, your units' movements and interactions with the world feel very organic. Battletech features several different biomes, each of which present unique strategic variables you need to account for before committing to a contract. While the variety in locales was certainly nothing to scoff at, I would've liked to see more dense urban environments.

Battletech's missions are not protracted engagements across multiple city blocks with a handful of soldiers, but slugfests between hulking death machines flinging enough munitions at each other to level a high-rise building. This does lend Battletech a great sense of scale, but the engagements are sometimes mired by a plodding pace. This structure isn't so much of a problem in smaller skirmishes, but larger battles have a tendency to drag as I waited for the AI to subsequently deliberate, move, and attack with each of its individual units. The geriatric pacing can often be blamed on the dynamic camera, which repeatedly cuts away to follow the action. Although you can disable this camera view, this option does not completely eliminate the problem.

From a strategic standpoint, the game occasionally suffers from a lack of information. Battletech is a game of metrics that, unfortunately, are often left obscured by an interface that struggles to convey its overwhelming volume of data. While most information is visible through tooltips, the Battletech's presentation makes digesting this information difficult at a glance. I often chose the simplest option for an engagement rather than the wisest, since weighing my options was so inefficient.

Battletech doesn't have a traditional difficulty setting, meaning that you are constantly at the mercy of the game's sometimes unpredictable difficulty curve. While you do have some control over the difficulty of your missions simply through the freeform nature of the campaign, too often I found myself either crushing the enemy wholesale or being woefully unprepared for what I thought would've been a cake walk. Much of this randomness can be attributed to Battletech's original design, in which a series of dice rolls governed many of the mechanics. This level of randomness is just as likely to work for you as against, leading to unpredictable outcomes.

At the meta level, Battletech is slightly more forgiving, which at least grants the levity to learn from your mistakes. Once I developed some manner of literacy with Battletech's various systems and felt like I could make more informed tactical decisions, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the myriad of tactical options at my disposal. While this didn't necessarily alleviate the randomness, my knowledge gave me the ability to roll with whatever punches the game threw and typically recover without too many losses.

Drums of War

Battletech's score, provided by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra and commanded by composer Jon Everist, is a welcome departure from the typical metal-inspired or synth-heavy arrangements found in this genre. Battletech's sweeping orchestral score echoes grand space operas, medieval combat, and tense, interpersonal conflicts. The game's sound deign mirrors the same level of production value, with appropriately bassy explosions

Battletech's graphics are generally serviceable. The imposing silhouettes of each 'Mech make them recognizable at a distance, but the graphics can occasionally fracture under closer scrutiny, especially textures for the 'Mechs and terrain. However, these minor blemishes are easy to excuse once all of the visual effects and graphics start working together. One standout from a graphical standpoint are the cutscenes' hand-drawn, animatic art style, bearing a strong resemblance to the cutscenes of Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak or Battlefleet Gothic: Armada. When paired with the excellent score and voice work, these renderings speak volumes in selling the exposition.

Battletech runs on the Unity engine, which helps with versatility and graphical fidelity. The Unity engine is responsible for powering everything from VR titles like Superhot VR, to the aesthetic platformer, Cuphead. However, this versatility doesn't necessarily translate into consistent performance, even when running on higher-end machines. I experienced some hitches when running the game on Ultra settings using an Nvidia 1080 Ti, a GPU which exceeds the game's recommended Nvidia GTX 670 or AMD R9 285. My processor also outpaced the recommended Intel Core i5-4460 or AMD FX-4300, but still occasionally dropped below the ideal 60 frames per second when the action got particularly hectic.

To the Victor, the Spoils

Even with Battletech's occasionally infuriating randomness, the satisfying combination of tactical gameplay and meta-strategy are enough to keep you invested through your initial playthrough. Despite a handful of minor issues, Battletech is an exceptionally rewarding turn-based strategy game. Once you clear the somewhat daunting learning curve, you'll find incredibly satisfying ways to leverage victory from even the direst circumstances. Battletech is an easy recommendation for any fan of the turn-based strategy genre or the celebrated board game.

Battletech (for PC)

Bottom Line: Featuring an engaging story, addictive gameplay, and beautiful art design, Battletech is a standout title in the turn-based strategy genre. However, the level of randomness can sometimes feel unfair.

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About the Author

Alice Newcome-Beill is the Inventory Control Coordinator for PCMag. Alice graduated from CUNY Brooklyn College with a degree in Television/Radio Broadcasting. A lifetime gamer, she has written video game and hardware reviews since her freshman year of college. In her spare time she dabbles in bicycle maintenance, creative writing, playing board gam... See Full Bio

Battletech (for PC)

Battletech (for PC)

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